Do you realize that every tyranid unit name is based off of a deragatory term for women? Some of them are British specific. The Sisters of Battle are the only female wariors in any human product, and their blood is used to bathe in. I have never seen a female model in the IG.
While there are a handful of female IG modelsis annoying (and a roaring trade in third party parts and models for female Guardsmen shows there is a demand for them) and the fact the Grey Knights, supposedly the purist warriors in the universe, equipped with the most resistant gear against the corruption of Chaos decided to murder and annoint there armour in the blood of Battle Sisters (oh hey, Khorne Grey Knights) was so incredibly stupid it put me off playing Grey Knights (and I went through most of Fifth Edition with there old Codex) I'm having a real time finding any information on Tyranid Units being negative terms for women. Would you mind explaining it? Google doesn't seem to have any answers. All I could find out about Carnifex's, for example, was that they were Roman Executioners.
Do you realize that every tyranid unit name is based off of a deragatory term for women? Some of them are British specific.
Yes, here in the UK we frequently call women 'genestealers' and 'hormagaunts' as a derogatory term.
What terms are you referring to? The only one that is even close is 'harpy', which is a reference to the mythological creature. Otherwise this does not appear to be a sustainable claim.
I have never seen a female model in the IG.
A quick Google Image search shows quite a few, though some of them may be from 'GW compatible' products. That said, there's a few unfortunate female Inquisitor and Commissar models as well (which are heavy on the exposed cleavage, sigh). There's another female commissar on the Imperial Guard page one the WH40K Wikia as well.
Certainly there's not many and definitely not enough.
As of the last time I played, there was like one or two female IG in this very specific unit. That's all. Not enough to say "there are female IG."
Certainly in the lore that is not the case. There is no gender discrimination in the Imperial Guard at all, so there's billions of women serving in its ranks. The Tanith First and Only (Gaunt's Ghosts) are a mixed unit, as are the Valhallans and the Harakoni Warhawks.
Women are badly under-represented in WH40K, but that has started to shift thanks to authors like Dan Abnett and Sandy Mitchell doing more to bring them to the fore. Hopefully that is something that will continue, as it certainly helps expand the popularity of the franchise.
Do you realize that every tyranid unit name is based off of a deragatory term for women? Some of them are British specific.Yes, here in the UK we frequently call women 'genestealers' and 'hormagaunts' as a derogatory term.
What terms are you referring to? The only one that is even close is 'harpy', which is a reference to the mythological creature. Otherwise this does not appear to be a sustainable claim.
I have never seen a female model in the IG.A quick Google Image search shows quite a few, though some of them may be from 'GW compatible' products. That said, there's a few unfortunate female Inquisitor and Commissar models as well (which are heavy on the exposed cleavage, sigh). There's another female commissar on the Imperial Guard page one the WH40K Wikia as well.
Certainly there's not many and definitely not enough.
As of the last time I played, there was like one or two female IG in this very specific unit. That's all. Not enough to say "there are female IG."Certainly in the lore that is not the case. There is no gender discrimination in the Imperial Guard at all, so there's billions of women serving in its ranks. The Tanith First and Only (Gaunt's Ghosts) are a mixed unit, as are the Valhallans and the Harakoni Warhawks.
Women are badly under-represented in WH40K, but that has started to shift thanks to authors like Dan Abnett and Sandy Mitchell doing more to bring them to the fore. Hopefully that is something that will continue, as it certainly helps expand the popularity of the franchise.
Before the fine castocalypse, there was a female gaunt's ghost. There are two female members of Colonel Schaeffer's Last Chancers. So it isn't fair to say their are none, but they could be a lot more common.
Before the fine castocalypse, there was a female gaunt's ghost
Yeah, but that was for the first two books in the series. They got a huge number of female recruits in Book 3 and they've been a big part of the story for the dozen or so novels since then. IIRC, Dan Abnett even said he did this deliberately to address the problem of gender disparity in the setting. Both Ravenor and Eisenhorn's support teams had several female members, and of course the third trilogy in the Inquistor series focuses on Inquisitor Bequin.
With Cain, the female Valhallans have been part of the story from the start. The commander of the regiment is female, and of course the entire series is 'edited' by the long-suffering Inquisitor Amberley Veil. Also, one of Cain's female proteges, Sulla (whom he dislike for being ludicrously rash in combat), goes on to become one of the greatest generals in the history of the Imperium, to his disbelief. The commander of the Imperial Guard forces in the game SPACE MARINE is also female. And so on.
WH40K radically under-represents these other groups and could do a lot better, but it's simply not true that there are no such depictions in the lore at all.
Women are badly under-represented in WH40K, but that has started to shift...Some day soon, GW will trademark "women," and anyone else supporting gender equality will get sued.
Wait, Apple haven't done that already?!
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Just...no.
Well, no one has been sued so there's no case to win or lose. As far as I can tell this hasn't even been confirmed as a real thing yet. Blog posts, IO9, Kotaku, and other sites ranting about how horrible Games Workshop is all link to each other, and all of those links ultimately filter back to a random fan fiction author who claims that this happened to her but hasn't publicized any of the alleged emails or done anything to prove this even happened.
Her book is still for sale on Amazon (along with a ton of other non-GW stuff that uses the term Space Marine), and you can still find ebook copies from other publishers. There's just no nook version available on Amazon.
It's entirely possible that the author made the whole thing up, or at least misrepresented what happened, in order to gain some free publicity. It's also possible that her specific depiction of space marines cut a little close to the 40k depiction, or that she violated some internal Kickstarter/Amazon rule, or ... anything really. It's all speculation and unconfirmed report at the time.
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Do you realize that every tyranid unit name is based off of a deragatory term for women? Some of them are British specific.Yes, here in the UK we frequently call women 'genestealers' and 'hormagaunts' as a derogatory term.
Termegant meaning a quarrelsome woman is the only one that pops to my mind. Hormagaunt is from jack vance.
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Hopefully the trail will end shortly after the defendant enters some E. E. Smith novels into evidence. He had references to 'Space Marines' back in 1940, and he wasn't even the first (just the first well known one).
First, contrary to the thread title, there is no suit. There is no trial. This was all kicked off by a cease-and-desist letter from GW to Amazon. That's all.
Second, in the US (and, I believe, in the UK), prior art does not matter for trademark law. Consider, e.g., that the magazine called Time has a trademarked name, and the word "time" predates the term "space marine" by a good many years.
You can find some more information and commentary by someone with more legal experience than I do HERE.
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Oh, it's not just speculation. It's a real thing. GW has been deleting and banning folks from their Facebook page (including a fellow academic who was just asking for their side of the story), and recently put forth a press release that pretty much confirmed it from their end. I'll chat with folks from EFF about this later this month.
While they were likely within their legal right to do so, it's also highly questionable.
Amazon was under no obligation to follow the cease and desist; there is no notice-and-takedown provision for trademark, unlike copyright. Bad on them. They've put it back up, possibly due to some assistance from EFF.
My knowledge of trademark law is only tangential to my academic focus on copyright, but I've had to look into it some in my time. Like attorney CE Petit noted in John Woodford's link, GW does not have a registered trademark for the term space marine for books or ebooks. Based on their odd, somewhat self-contradictory post, they seem to be attempting to assert a common law unregistered trademark in the term space marine in that book/ebook arena. The reasons they've given is an obligation to shareholders, and that trademark law makes them do it. (As a side note, Scrivener's Error is a terrific blog for author-related perspectives on copyright and other legal matters. I don't always agree with him, but his stuff is always worth reading, even more when it comes to the civil procedure things that folks often gloss over.)
That trademark law makes them do it is a tiny bit overstated, usually, but it is true that if trademarks aren't protected, they can be lost. (Thank you, Lanham Act, for turning consumer protection law into something really bizarre.) That they're doing it here, where they don't have a registered trademark, though, is a bit more complicated.
"Prior art" is usually a patent thing. Existing commercial uses of a term do matter for trademarks, although they don't always win out. (The story of the trademarking of "Keep Austin Weird" is a particularly illustrative one.) What probably matters in this case that generic terms can't be trademarks. From appearances, they're trying to make sure that the mark won't be considered generic, so that they can assert trademark rights in the book/ebook space. And that's what people are upset about, and their response so far hasn't really clarified that.
Their release seems to indicate that they're not claiming trademark on prose... but as it also says they are responding to commercial uses of the term (not mentioning in what areas), then there's definitely a disconnect.
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I'm a huge fan of GW's models and BL's Warhammer fiction; I find Warhammer novels and stories to be some of the very best sci-fi and fantasy being published. After years of top quality writing and editing, I expect a certain near-perfection from the books.
I wrote GW some time ago about the fan-fiction being sold on Amazon. I've read some of it, and without fail it's absolutely awful--poorly written, bad grammar, misspellings and typos, formatting errors, it goes on and on.
I'm no great writer myself, but that doesn't mean I can't recognize good writing. I can certainly see that it's illegal to sell this Warhammer fan-fiction and use GW's art to do so.
If I wrote Pathfinder fan-fiction and sold it in the kindle store at Amazon, and used Paizo's art as covers and even interior illustration, what do you think Lisa would do?
When they took a look at my really bad story, with its hundreds of misspellings and typos, aparent English-as-a-fifth-language sentence structure, don't you imagine they might be upset? Not to mention, my garbage sold alongside Paizo's (or GW's) cheapens the good stuff.
Now, without really knowing the particulars of the Spot the Space Marine case, it sounds like GW picked a rather innocent fight; I wish they'd tackled the actual Warhammer knock-off tripe at Amazon instead.
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I stopped going to Games Workshop stores because they must have put their staff on a combination Speed, eckies and coke.
They bound up and put on an American style hard sell wearing a f##~ing stupid Cheshire cat grin and calling me dude.
Rule one: don't hard sell to Australians especially ones that grew up in the country or a small town... it freaks them out, and creates an extreme level of distrust. "Why is this bastard trying so hard to sell me s@*&"
Rule two: My personal space is a one fence post away radius. Get too close to me I get very edgy.
Rule three: Don't call me dude... Don't call me sir either I am not your superior and the f@@$ing Queen has yet to give me a Knighthood.
Rule four: When I say I am just looking that indicates I want you to go away. I have a friend who will tell sales people to get the f&&# out of his face after the third time he has said he doesn't require their assistance. I just leave and never come back.
Rule five don't grin at me like an idiot... Just don't. You can smile but don't force yourself to look happy... Manic is not going to sell me anything.
Rule 6 Bring back the Squats, yes I went there... I want Dwarves back in my 40K.
I played 40k when I was a kid (18 years ago, ish) and browsed for ages with little hard sell before deciding what to spend my saved up pocket money on.
Now, if I go in the Oxford store I am jumped on in two seconds, and they keep the paints next-and-almost-behind the counter so you have to peer over the counter at them.
I've been in twice and each time I've been bothered about what I am playing, blak, blah... I said the same thing each time and the guy still bothered me:
"I paint Reaper minis for my Pathfinder games."
"Well, which paints would you like?"
"I don't know yet."
"What are you painting?"
...
Fortunately we have a department store with a big toy section which sells GW paints. I also go to Leamington a lot and they have a toy store with a GW section, plus my hometown toy store has a little GW paint section (just past the acres of airfix).
I like the paints, the mini style is over-the-top for me, I enjoyed the game when I was a teenager, I enjoyed working for them...
But I hate going into their shops.
Maybe they're just trying to get rid of the old guy with a beard?
I prefer not to be called sir...
Back in the late 90s at the Pitt Street Sydney store, I could have a conversation with the manager, get sensible advice on dry brushing and inking. Play a game with some of the guys, they made my wife feel comfortable - asked if she played when she said no but she did paint they were interested in her technique especially after they she showed them Skarsnik and Gobbla.
The manager moved on, the store moved and it became the hell of hyperactive bellends. The stores became more and more packed with cheesetastic munchkin lords, I lost interest and stopped buying... Gave away all 140 night goblin spearman, 80 night goblin archers, wolf riders, blackorks, boar boyz, squigs, fanatics and so on.
My favourite tactic was to field a unit of 80 night goblin spearmen with Skarsnik, Gobla and a crown of command.
who claims that this happened to her but hasn't publicized any of the alleged emails
Emails about legal matters are usually packed with disclaimers and legal terminology forbidding them from being reprinted. It's also considered bad form to republish private emails without the other party's permission.
It's also possible that her specific depiction of space marines cut a little close to the 40k depiction
The space marine character in the book is female, and since WH40K Space Marines can't be female, that's clearly not the case.
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OK, the book is more like a play, and it's available again on Amazon.
I just finished reading it: it is as far from a 40K story as you can get. The descriptions of the 'Space Marine' are nothing, nothing, like GW's Adeptus Astartes. The time period is 2020, the planet is very definitely the Earth we all know and love, and not the 20,000 years-in-the-future parallel Earth of Warhammer.
GW is being ridiculous; there's no nice way to say this. I can't believe any of their people actually read the play, or they'd never have taken any action.
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who claims that this happened to her but hasn't publicized any of the alleged emailsEmails about legal matters are usually packed with disclaimers and legal terminology forbidding them from being reprinted. It's also considered bad form to republish private emails without the other party's permission.
It's also possible that her specific depiction of space marines cut a little close to the 40k depictionThe space marine character in the book is female, and since WH40K Space Marines can't be female, that's clearly not the case.
Re emails - just fyi all of that legal stuff at the end of an email is complete bunk. It is the equivalent of saying "I just told you this secret, stranger who I have never met before, please don't tell anyone else."
Lawyers slap it on everything in the mistaken belief it will cover their ass if a client confidence is inadvertently sent out.
As an aside, even before this whole thing started, she the author put a portion of profits made on the e-book to the Wounded Warrior project (as noted on at the end of her blog entry here).
I had never heard of her or her works before. I went and bought her book now--hey, it sounds interesting (haven't read it yet, so can't comment on its quality yet, but it was well reviewed). I wonder how many people will have heard of her stories now and buy them--thanks to Games Workshop being a bag of dicks! Looks like a decent lady--and a good charity--will get a little extra income, I hope.
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Little GW store story...my sister was going shopping one day and asked if there was anything I wanted. I asked if she would mind going into the GW store and picking up some paint...warning her that she would get the "OMG, a female" treatment. So when asked, what are you painting? Holding a small pot of wash she replied....My house.
I'm looking for ancient history (20 years ago) on google but can't find anything; I remember, though, back in the day there was this tiny comic company called Northstar Comics or something, and Marvel sued them over the "Northstar" name because they had a superhero named Northstar.
I can't find anything about it any more though.